When Doctor Who revived on March 26th, 2005, I was seven years old, a few months away from my eighth birthday. I was the perfect age to have my mind utterly blown by the galactic voyages, the heritage, the sets, the monsters; everything about it was just cool. Russell T. Davis’ era of Who was one of the things that made me the genre fan I am today. Now that I’m older, I look back on it and wonder which episodes, stories, stand out most. One day I will certainly do an article analyzing speech and identity in the Series 4 episode Midnight, an underrated gem of an episode. Blink gave me a phobia of statues for months, and I remember coming home from school pretending to be a Cyberman (complete with stomping sound effects) once the new incarnations came through in Rise of the Cybermen/Age of Steel.

Yet for me, the more I think on it, the more I affirm my beliefs that The Impossible Planet/The Satan Pit, episodes 8 and 9 of Series 2 respectively, are the best episodes of the show’s now 13, nearly 14 year, revival. A blend of cosmic horror, claustrophobic sci-fi thriller, and possession horror movie, this storyline is an immaculate blend of multiple genres, pushing the boundaries of Saturday-night family TV, which retains the ability to chill even the hardiest of adults. The Halloween special Waters of Mars was a very successful episode along a similar vein, but despite the claustrophobia in that episode, it doesn’t have the imagery, the scale, and grandeur, that comes with being stranded on a planet orbiting a black hole. This article is my attempt to analyze, decode, and understand just why this storyline is sci-fi/horror perfection, through the physical and emotional squeezing of the episode, and the theological darkness of The Beast.

Isolation

Sometimes horror tries to overload your senses with something vast and grand, such as the infinite size of the cosmos and the beyond, stuffed with elder gods and creatures unfathomable. This is most definitely the Lovecraft tradition of horror. One of the other approaches is to make the whole thing feel claustrophobic, and to put the pressure on the audience, tighter and tighter and tighter. This, perhaps, could be considered a Hitchcock tradition. The Impossible Planet/The Satan Pit (which I will abbreviate as TIP or TSP throughout the rest of this article), manages through its sheer concept alone, to accomplish both a physical claustrophobia and tension, and a grand intellectual, mythological scope.

In TSP, a sequence sees Rose, Danny, Toby, and Jefferson, trapped in the vents underneath Sanctuary Base 6 being pursued by the possessed, murderous Ood. As if this isn’t bad enough, Captain Zachary has to manually shift the oxygen to them from each section of the tunnel each time they move on to the next section.

For me, this is the ultimate moment of claustrophobia in the two episodes, and it’s a careful appreciation of each turn of the screw (pun intended) that makes us feel so tense. Here’s my quick run-down of the beats up to this point that apply the pressure.

The Tardis, the time-and-space ship, lands on a base, not feeling well. As The Doctor says, it’s like “‘she’s worried.’”

The Doctor announces that they’ve arrived on a sanctuary base. The word ‘sanctuary’ implies a safe haven, but from what?

‘Welcome to Hell’ is scribbled on a wall, along with an indecipherable ancient language.

After an earthquake, the revelation of their situation is made. The base is on a planet orbiting a black hole, held by a strange, unknown energy source that could plunge them into it at any moment.

An earthquake plunges the Tardis into the depths of Kroptor, the planet. Their usual escape route has been lost.

The base’s electronics, and Toby, come under the influence of The Beast.

A hull breach loses one of the crew members, and they watch her drift up into the black hole. A constant reminder of mortality perched on the edge of the abyss.

The Doctor and Iva descend down into the bowels of the planet in a small cable lift. The Doctor, the main intelligence and rationale of the galaxy, is physically distant from those above.

The Ood become possessed; their translators changed into devices capable of electrocution.

The Satan Pit opens down into a further unknown dark.

The lift cable snaps, trapping The Doctor and Iva down below.

Their electronic communication is temporarily stopped.

With Ood all around, the crew have to shuffle through the underfloor ventilation tunnels to reach Ood habitation, the den of the things trying to kill them, in order to cut the possession of The Beast.

Zachary, holed up in a room with Ood cutting their way in, has to manually, time-consumingly, shift their oxygen after them.

The Ood are after them in the tunnels.

There are several aspects I’ve excluded for my later discussion on the Satan aspects, but it is easy to see even from this simple breakdown, how the episodes add layer upon layer of threat and danger. This sequence in the tunnels is perhaps only 2/3 of the way through the episodes’ total runtime, and there are sequences with danger in the rocket at the finale, but I believe the ventilation chase to be the best example of pressure-cooker isolation I’ve seen in Who.

In Doctor Who Confidential S2 E8, the set designers acknowledge Alien (1979) for inspiration in the base’s design. Indeed, the walkways are hemmed in by pillars that crowd the crew as they duck and scamper down the corridors. Similarly, the Nostromo’s corridors in Alien were designed so the actors had to crouch through the ship, complete with constant vents of steam and smoke from the walls that are also constantly shown in Sanctuary Base 6 coming from the floor. Far more than just the base, however, the civilisation in the interior of the planet also seems to have a touch of the Alien franchise about it, with the large sculptures something you’d find on board the Space Jockey’s ship. The abseil of The Doctor into the pit isn’t too dissimilar to Kane’s descent into the egg room. And you can’t watch the ventilation chase sequence without thinking of Dallas’ search through the Nostromo’s vents after the Xenomorph. This time, they can’t even see the threat as the Ood don’t register as life forms, and the opening of the final door to reveal the Ood there ready and waiting for them is so reminiscent of Dallas’ demise in Alien that you have to accept the homage.

Part of this story’s mastery, then, is of the sense of claustrophobia, of danger pressing in on you. Taking inspiration from its predecessors and finding new ways to tighten the vice, the whole scenario feels like you’re being slowly crushed. If the lack of air doesn’t get you, the Ood will. If they don’t, The Beast will plunge you into space. If he doesn’t do that, he’ll ensure the base doesn’t let you out. If that doesn’t happen, he’ll plunge you into the black hole. The noose gets tighter and tighter with each passing moment.

Satan Unbound

When, in TIP, the Doctor calculates the amount of energy needed to hold the planet in orbit around the black hole, he reels off a load of numbers, to which Rose replies, “‘all the sixes.’” Specifically, there are three of them. 666. The story deals with the iconography of Satan and a fairly unique discussion of language and communication to discuss the mere concept, the idea, and the horror, of the devil.

Perhaps the most obvious point of contact with this is the ancient language. The connection between this writing and an ancient evil are immediately apparent, with the ‘Welcome to Hell’ sign being scrawled above a copied passage of writing. That the planet they have arrived on is equated with Hell is subtly reinforced with several shots through doors and over shoulders, one such example being when Rose gets food from the Ood, where the ‘Hell’ on the sign is clearly visible.

The ancient language is also our main visual clue that Toby is possessed/himself. The writing jumps from the pottery to his hands, and later vanishes into the Ood. That this language is that of The Beast and not of the ancient civilisation is apparent from the pictures depicting the capture of The Beast down in the pit itself. These people used images, whereas The Beast uses words. Images exist purely in a visual form, whereas language can exist in visual or audible forms, or even touch if you think of Braille. This makes The Beast’s method of communication much more effective and potent for expanding throughout the universe, perpetuating his image throughout the countless civilisations.

That language is the myth-maker of The Beast’s choosing is made apparent when Ida discusses the planet’s name, spoken of only in scripture, and labelled as a demon when the Black Hole spat it back out. Not only is it through text that the story of the planet’s evil, and by extension its resident, perpetuated, but ‘scripture’ implies a religious text.

Despite a brief flash of The Beast on the hologram in the main hub, it is through words and speech that The Beast’s rising is foreshadowed. The computers announce that ‘He is awake,’ and Rose’s phone is hijacked to deliver the same message on a phone that can’t get a signal. Also, The Beast’s targets for possession are those with the closest links to language and words. Toby is an obvious choice because he is closest to the language as the archaeologist. However, the Ood are important thematically because they require the translators to communicate with their human masters. Before we get the hijacked message, the ‘we must feed’ interference and joke following TIP’s title sequence puts language at the forefront of the terror.

These translators are important not only for The Beast to use as weapons (language being used to kill and carry ideas of death), but it is also through the Ood that we get our longest pre-possession hints, “‘The Beast and his armies shall rise from The Pit to make war against God’”, and the lengthy discussion with The Doctor. The concepts of The Beast and his mythic perpetuation through language and words are inescapable. Language is how we view, understand, and construct the world around us, and that The Beast would use this as a means to attack us is perhaps more terrifying than anything else.

The Doctor’s incredulity and vehement rejection of the idea that The Beast can have existed before the universe is little relief for the audience, for The Beast knows so much that he can’t know. He sees into the minds of all the crew, and even predicts Rose’s future several episodes later. This complete knowledge of all, traversing the realms of possibility, puts the possibility of The Doctor being wrong into question. Is he right that The Beast is lying? After all, one of the names for Satan is ‘The Father of Lies.’ On the other hand, everything The Beast has said occurs in actuality, so who is to say he is wrong? That something is impossible isn’t an issue for The Beast; The Doctor describes his language as being ‘impossibly old’ upon first seeing it.

And then, in the final scenes, we have possessed-Toby’s ravings that the idea of him (The Beast) will always live on, despite being launched into the black hole, lingers, ‘I shall never die. The thought of me is forever.’ The Doctor himself says that ‘an idea is hard to kill’. The Beast’s final words that ‘nothing shall ever destroy me. Nothing’, hang in the air long after the episode concludes. In addition to this damning statement, The Doctor comes away with no conclusions as to what he believes he found, ‘I don’t know, I never did find out.’ We are left none the wiser. After escaping possessed aliens sent by a Satanic beast, who claims to have been from beyond time and space, eternal and forever in the hearts of men, and managing to escape the snatching jaws of a black hole, a horror still resonates. The idea of evil will never be killed. They don’t defeat evil in the end, they just manage to escape its wrath a little longer.

Conclusion

Sometimes, when it gets it just right, Doctor Who manages to push all the right buttons. In an impossible situation, isolated and trapped, claustrophobic, yet opening up the theological, philosophical, and personal horrors of belief, thought and language, these two episodes deliver a truly captivating, yet terrifying 90 minutes of television. Ignore what anyone says; this episode arc is the most horrifying, devastating, and yet hauntingly beautiful storyline the show has had in its revival.

That is how you see me, right? But that perception is incorrect. You must come to terms with the fact that I exist, and my existence is not dependent on your acknowledgement of it. Mister Rock Star. Mister Spin Magazine. Mister Rolling Stone. Mister Self-Destruct/Burnout/Fallout, every misstep greedily devoured by the press and vomited out for public consumption. You stare down from rock and roll Valhalla, never wondering about the speck in your eye. A plank, really.

Even though I’ve been with you every step of the way. And have helped, at times profoundly.

Remember your first record deal? When everybody in the industry who counted said you’d lost an engine on the runway. Your shenanigans with gangsters, drawing attention to yourself on the most negative level. As if you were hardcore, growing up in the suburbs with all the rights and privileges pertaining. And that girl, the redhead, the junkie–she didn’t do you any favors either. What was her name, Katrina? A real piece of work. If you didn’t realize that those track marks weren’t from insulin shots, you’re either a bigger fool than I ever suspected, or steeped in denial up to your eyeballs.

That was when I stepped in. I had to work hard behind the scenes, believe me. Hard out there for a ghost. Well, not a ghost so much as one of the host. Hey, that rhymes. Rhymes one hell of a lot better than most of your lyrics.

Are you paying attention now?

Apparently not. But that’s okay. I can be extremely patient.

You have no idea how patient I am capable of being.

Which is why it doesn’t really bother me that you refuse to accept, have historically blinded yourself to me, my reality, the care and concern I have for you.

Your future, your career.

If I wanted to, and trust me, I have the skills, I could MAKE you see me. Work some serious Tim Burton mojo. Make Beetlejuice look like Bambi. Bloodshot eyes on springs, oh yes; sloppy jaws spewing all kinds of rubbish, banging on your closet door when you’re shacked up with the conquest du jour.

But I’m not about the big bad noise. More of a creeper.

Like about now, for example. As you stuff the Bolivian Gross National Product up your nose, handlers and roadies all nervous, your agent trying to reach you on your cell which you won’t answer because he’ll probably want to lecture you like your mom always used to do. And you left that scene behind you long ago. I know. I was there too.

So what are you waiting for? The crowd is screaming your name. Two hundred and fifty thousand fans jammed into the biggest venue you’ve ever played. The Daulton Amphitheater, that’s a serious showcase. And the sooner you get your pampered ass out on that stage, the quicker you can run through your set. Yeah, all those songs.

But maybe you’re stalling because, at some level, you know what I say is true.

Lots of time. Oceans. I’ll let you process that.

Feel that numbness creeping up your left foot? Knock knock knocking on heaven’s empty bone. Whatever that means–you insisted on those lines. But if the shoe fits…

It’s not me, man. I know it’s hard to swivel your leatherclad hips and shake your tubesnake when you can’t feel your leg. Naturally you’ve collapsed on your side and your guitarist jumped in front of you, make it look like part of the show. To tell the truth, I don’t know what in Hell is wrong with you. Embolism? Lack of blood circulation due to the Bolivian, maybe. But I didn’t do it. I might have warned you that you needed to slow down, I mean in a general way. But specifically, the dead hand spreading its fingers across your belly? That’s a medical crisis, not a spiritual condition.

Of course, I can’t let you fall on your face now. Not with all these people paying good money to see you not make a total ass of yourself. Career suicide is simply not an option. You’ll have to save that for when you’re Old Elvis-sized and playing county fairs. Never mind the Fluffy Bunnies, here’s the Doom Hippies.

Shouldn’t have locked me out, dude. Unwise. Should have locked me in and loaded me into your chamber. But then you wouldn’t stumble and hurt yourself, and who cares about a rock star who isn’t damaged? Playing the world’s fool has been a real boost for your sales. Up until the fool became a drooling idiot. Half the audience is simply here for the sake of curiosity. Bunch of ghouls, if you ask me. Looky-loo’s at the three-lane pileup. But they’re OUR ghouls.

The good news is that now I have a port of entry. You wouldn’t give me one of your own will, but I’m not embarrassed to take a little advantage of a sick man. Especially when it’s for his own good.

So here’s Black Daniels, lead singer of the heaviest and slowest band in the history of metal, back on his feet. Maybe staggering a little bit. But he’s moving, and his eyes are open, responding to external stimuli.

Please don’t worry. I know exactly what I’m doing. And you have a better than front row seat. Hell, you’re so close to the action, you practically are the action.

I lean into the mike, and the peeps go nuts. Wipe my mouth–tastes like the last funeral of rubbish. (You really need to stop smoking, dude.) Count down the intro one more time. Savor the moment, the adrenaline rush, the band crunching behind me, infinite sustain, one chord per minute. The drummer nodding out between beats. The bassist taking a smoke break.

The ones that actually pay attention to the lyrics look a little shocked. Yeah, it’s not the words they heard on the album. These are of a superior class.

Irish Ghost Stories contains stories that tell of spooky goings-on in almost every part of the country. They include the tales of the Wizard Earl of Kildare, the Scanlan Lights of Limerick, Buttoncap of Antrim, Maynooth College’s haunted room, Loftus Hall in Wexford, and an account of how the poet Fancis Ledwidge appeared to an old friend in County Meath. The country of Ireland is full of old castles with secret rooms, and while some of the stories are obvious figments of lively imaginations, there are other tales that cannot be easily explained.

While many of these stories are quaint hearsay and exaggerated truths, they are fun to read. The location and historical details are interesting and probably mean more to those who live in the area. I especially like to read these aloud during a fireside gathering. They lend themselves to a storytelling sort of atmosphere and are fun to share.

My favorite tales are:

“Murder Hole”, which is a door on a high floor with no outlet but a 50 foot drop to your death.

“Devil’s Horse”, which tells of a late night customer at a blacksmith. When the blacksmith is done, he’s paid in gold and the customer’s cloven feet walk away. After the customer is gone, the blacksmith finds what he thought was gold, is glass.

This book also tells of ladies in white, banshees, and all the fun stuff ghost lovers have come to enjoy.

Live Action Reviews

by Crystal Connor

Devil

Plotline: Five strangers trapped in an elevator realize that one of them is the Devil in this thriller from director John E. Dowdle (Quarantine) and screenwriter Brian Nelson (Hard Candy, 30 Days of Night). The first installment of “The Night Chronicles,” a film series in which up-and-coming filmmakers bring to life stories conceived by M. Night Shyamalan, Devil opens to find five Philadelphia office workers filing into the elevator of an inner-city office building. But a typical day at the office takes a sudden detour into terror when the elevator becomes stuck between floors, and the passengers discover that the Devil does exist, and he’s standing right before them. As emergency workers work frantically to free them, secrets are revealed and the passengers realize their only hope for survival is to confront their darkest sins in front of the others. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi for Rotten Tomatoes

Scariness Factor: One a scale of 1 to 5 I would say 3. They’re mostly jump scares and for a connoisseur of all things horror, I can usually see them coming

Gross-out Factor: N/A.

High Points: I am a huge fan of religious themed horror entertainment. I love all the hidden-in-plain-sight symbolism and the deliberate use of words. This was the 2nd time watching Devil and it was way more fun because I saw all the stuff I missed when I 1st saw it.

One of the things I really liked was the scenes shot in total darkness. Just like those trapped in the elevator you can see anything but you can hear what’s going on which adds to the tension. I also loved the way the spoken narrative was woven into the movie

Complaints: Shyamalan takes us all the way to the edge but then kinda phones in the ending to give us a somewhat happy one. So instead of it being a thoroughly terrifying experience it’s just a highly startling one.

Overall: I think watching horror movies should be an ‘interactive’ activity (which is why I watch them alone) and the more I yell at the people on the screen the more fun I’m having and Devil is really fun, like being on a roller coaster. Watching it again was like hanging out with an old friend I haven’t seen in a while.

Stars: 3 ½ Stars

~~~Diary Entries~~~

At 1:30 am on Aug 15th, 2014, Crystal Connor, wrapped in a fleece blanket, seated in front of the fireplace picked up her remote and clicked play. For the next two hours her neighbors were subjected to screaming, crying, and expletive outburst…

This is the unedited journal chronicling the harrowing experience her neighbors were forced to endure as she watched, for the 2nd time M.Night Shyamalan’s 2010 Devil

Reader discretion is Advised

Entry 1: And they’re trapped.

Entry 2: Clearly he’s claustrophobic

Entry 3: Why does the engineer always look like that? We don’t look like that in real life. Come on!

Entry 4: HOLY SHIT! Lol that scared the shit outta me.

Entry 5: I told you, he’s claustrophobic

Entry 6: lol, a captive audience

Entry 7: What the fuck? You know better. See! Dumb ass

Entry 8: They’re already there

Entry 9: No its not and that’s not Jesus

Entry 10: What the fuck?

Entry 11: LOL

Entry 12: Fine then, don’t listen to him

Entry 13: Yeah you are cus your not listening

Entry 14: Stay your ass where you are!

Entry 15: No engineering in their right mind would do that without safety gear! Serously?!

Entry 16: And that’s why.

Entry 17: My dog is growling at the TV, even she knows better

Entry 18: The last thing I would want to hear at that moment would be prayers uttered in Latin

Entry 19: Oh my God the fire dept is tearing shit up

Entry 20: Oh for fucks sake!

Entry 21: Are you trained to do that? Then leave it alone.

Entry 22: DON’T!

Entry 23: I fucking told you.

Entry 24: Excuse me Captain-save-a-hoe but that’s not your job

Entry 25: You don’t.

Entry 26: Sweet Jesus

Entry 27: OMG that’s right!

Entry 28: That bitch didn’t just fix her hair.

Entry 29: And M. Night for the win

Washington State native Crystal Connor has been terrorizing readers since before Jr. high School and loves anything to do with monsters, bad guys, rogue scientific experiments, jewelry, sky-high high heel shoes & unreasonably priced hang bags. She is also considering changing her professional title to ‘dramatization specialist’ because it’s so much more theatrical than being just a mere drama queen. Crystal’s latest projects can be found both on her blog and Facebook fan page at:

The BayCon Horror panel was awesome! Nice seeing all of you and chatting with authors Laurel Anne Hill and J. Malcolm Stewart! I always enjoy taking notes on what we talk about and letting your feedback steer our show and feedback topics.

For all of you who couldn’t make it, you might be wondering what the horror buzz is. Here is a list of what the panelist and audience talked about. Do you agree with the list? Would you like to add anything?

KEY:
+ means the majority liked it
– means the majority didn’t like it
? means none of us have seen it or have an opinion one way or another, or that it was a such a quick mention, we didn’t have time to discuss it.